Sober
by What's the Big Idea
Summary: Sly Cooper, in a rare moment of sheer honesty, decides to answer properly when Carmelita asks him a tough question. (A quickly written idea I couldn't let go of. May continue, might not.)


At the end of the day, the Cooper legacy has never been about stealing, thievery, or even honour.

Sly's pretty sure that, other than a few trusted souls in the deepest pits of the accounting hell called Interpol, nobody knows the Cooper name. Famous thieves are rarely the successful ones, because the successful ones are quiet, unseen, background. Even a guy as evil, grandstanding, and twisted as Clockwerk knew that. It was why Clockwerk was always the shadow in the background of the Thievius Raccoonus - quiet, unseen, background.

So why are they thieves? It's simple. Teaching a lesson.

When he was a little boy, bouncing on his father's knee, Sly Cooper's first lesson in his family's art was self-awareness. He looked at what he did and what it did to others, and by the time he'd left the orphanage he was brilliant at understanding himself. He knew he was a tad too laid back, he knew he drove his friends crazy with worry, and he knew it was him that caused his two best friends in the whole world to become Interpol targets.

And the thing about people, any kind of people, whether they're from the guts of Australia or the peak of a skyscraper in New York, is that introspection won't come easy. Sly's born into it, but it takes years before he's completely honest with himself, and even then, it's easy to fall into bad habits and ignore his own decisions. Everyone is the hero of their own story, and his is so wild that it's easy to get lost in the ups and the downs.

So, his father said, it was the job of a Cooper to make people introspective. In fact, that was the task of the first Cooper job - Slytunkhamen the first had written down, in sleek hieroglyphs, the story of a heist which turned a greedy god-king into a grieving, humble soul, stepping uneasily through golden halls which were devoid of the comforts he used to hide himself. The Coopers took people who had been denied their humanity and broke them into it.

It was painful. Of course it was! It broke worldviews, made people suffer, put men behind bars or six feet under. But at the end of the day, powerful people were trimmed down to the basics and began to grow again, and for every criminal who came out of prison knowing what it was like on the other side of the coin, there were a pile of victims - nameless, faceless, and ultimately _real_ \- who were protected from the horrors of a criminal life, doing things that twist you like a ribbon in the wind.

Sly always remembered this. He has to admit, as his introspective father taught him to, that sometimes he gets carried away. He thrives as a criminal, enjoying second-hand riches and jumping hoops to taste the thrill of a job well done. If it weren't for the sobering life of an orphan, he might have needed his father to reign in his less honorable tendencies.

But his father isn't around any more, and all that's left of a man who tried to fix five fiends too many are memories, a book, and a lesson well learned.

* * *

So, when Carmelita asks him why he steals, sitting in a helicopter (and not for the first time) and handcuffed to the seat (again, not for the first time), he decides, to heck with it, why not be honest?

"To teach a lesson the law can't." he offers blithely, and he's surprised by how dull his own voice is. Shame. He likes sounding high on life. Sober isn't fun.

Carmelita gapes at him. She's really quite pretty when she's gaping, but her mouth hanging open is giving him an itch to reach out which he definitely doesn't need in a moment like this. She shakes her head. "You're playing the _morality_ card? And I thought you couldn't sink any lower."

Sly frowns. "I'm not lying. I rarely lie. It's in the Thievius Raccoonus. 'By his cane do I take his crown and leave him subject to his words.'" He sighs. "Slytunkhamen was way too serious, but he set the base code by which every Cooper lives."

"Criminal laws are an oxymoron," Carmelita quips sharply, turning her head towards the sky breezing past them outside. She flips one leg over her knee. "don't try to play me, Cooper."

"What could I get out of this?" Sly challenges her. He loves the Inspector, but sometimes - just sometimes - her black-and-white views grate on his nerves. Her unwillingness to believe is painful, and really puts a damper on their whole gig.

Carmelita frowns slightly. "You could earn _me_ ," she replies, testily. "You're cornered on a helicopter and you're trying to win my favor so that when you get locked up, I sympathize with you and give you a chance to get away."

"Ah yes," Sly hums, "Lima Syndrome. What a terrible fate." His face twists into a frown. He doesn't like it. "Cut the crap, Carmelita. You just don't want to admit that your targets can be halfway decent people."

You know, it's funny. They really should have arguments like this more often, because she's the cop and he's the robber, and they should hate each other's guts. They really should. But Carmelita brings out the good in him, the guy who wants to see everyone walk away better, and he can tell that whenever he's around he drives Carmelita crazy with questions - about _herself_. And when they actually get down to the fight, more often than not they're fighting on the same side, albeit using different methods. It's their inability to reconcile those methods which tears them apart, again and again.

Carmelita looks ready to cry. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like it at all, but he knows that she probably needs it. So he closes his eyes and says, "I'm not watching. Want to take a step out and yell at something that isn't me?"

"Fuck off, Ringtail." she says. She doesn't move.

* * *

It takes her twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds to break.

"You're being serious for once," she hisses, into the silence which has lasted thirteen minutes, four seconds. "so I may as well get this out while it has a chance of getting through that thick, thieving skull of yours. Do you have any idea what you _do_ to me?"

"Yes," he admits freely. That stops her short. "it's the second thing I was taught to do. The first was introspection." He shrugs. "I know you're conflicted. You're struggling to decide if I'm a good guy or a bad one, all while juggling this... whatever it is... we have."

Carmelita looks torn. "Then... _why_?"

Sly's face twists into a frown again. He hates frowning. He should stop doing it. Right after he finishes this conversation. "Because you need to be challenged," he replies, slowly, testing the words. "It's what the Cooper clan does. You feel safe in a world of black and white. Cops are good. Thieves are bad. It's safe, isn't it?" He blanks his face so his tells won't change her reaction. She stares at him like she's never seen him before. "It's safe. You know exactly what to do. Arrest criminals, abide by the law. Bang." he mimes her shooting her pistol. "Simple." He shifts. "Except it isn't. Because those criminals will walk again, and you'll arrest them again, and again, and again. Nothing changes in a safe world."

He can tell she's thinking as it flicks over her face. Muggshot. Panda King. Dimitri Lousteau. All the people, petty thieves and midnight drunkards who have been behind bars too many times to count, and yet walk as free men today. They're still criminals doing criminal things, but sometimes, they've changed. Not because of the law. Never because they were behind bars.

Because of him.

Because they had their own successes torn away.

Because they had the coin flipped on them.

Because of thieves.

"I hate you," she says. "Ringtail." She tacks it on with little heat. He hates seeing her so confused because she's fire in the night and she isn't really designed to be quiet. But then again, she isn't designed to straddle the law, either, and here he is, trying to convince her it wouldn't be so bad.

"I know." he shrugs. He'd say something witty, but unlike what Bentley thinks of him, he does actually know when to shut up. It's just that their idea of the right time to shut up is very, very different.

"... You were saying something about Slytunkhamen."

"Yes. Founder of the Cooper clan."

"... He founded a thieving clan. Why?"

The helicopter buzzes around his words, which he tastes carefully before he uses them. It's frustrating to wait on his words but he has to, when she's finally listening to him. "He was friends with a pharaoh. His friend was corrupted by the power it gave him. He wanted to break the rule, but he didn't want to kill his friend." Sly shrugged. "He knew there was a good person, somewhere in there. So he stole the thing that had corrupted him; his crown."

"So you're saying that the Cooper's goal is...?" She probes, her face turned pointedly at her combat boots.

"To fight corruption." Sly tastes the words and decides he doesn't like them. Not at all. "In a way. It's a... 'taste of their own medicine' style of motive. And despite my own struggle with it, I do try to stick to that." He watches her face. It isn't easy, with her turned down and away, but he's been studying people for years. It's a part of the job. She's so close to a change he can taste it. "Some people never learn. Muggshot never really learned. But that hasn't stopped me trying."

Carmelita is an amazing woman. She's fire and light and justice, and she's brave enough to be that in a world that would take one look at her overwhelmingly feminine frame and decide she's a bedwarmer for her superior. So much of her is a wall against that judgement, however, that seeing the girl beneath struggling to fight against him _hurts._ It hurts a lot, because he probably won't get the chance to know who that girl is before he changes her forever.

Her face goes clear. "So you're... 'grey'. Being just as bad to punish people?"

"Not punish," he replies, feeling just as blank as his face probably looks. "Break. You can't fix someone without breaking them first."

Her face tightens. Relaxes. She breaths deeply but quietly. Interpol technique, no doubt. "That sounds worse."

Sly shrugs. He hates being this sober. He wonders if there's a pizza being ordered, if Murray and Bentley are playing a card game going on back in the van, if their hideout is decorated with his latest heist and they're toasting him while he blabs on about his family. "It can be. Sometimes it doesn't work. But at least those times are frequent."

Carmelita frowns suddenly. "You haven't flirted since I asked."

How can he be so high in the sky with a lovely woman, and yet be so disgustingly sober?

"Timing is bad," he says, leaning back into the cold seats of the police helicopter. "I'm smarter than to try and off-foot you when there's no reason to. I can't make a quick escape if I distract you and you're too defensive to be flattered." She blusters something about _never_ being flattered, and he rolls his eyes. "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, and I've had quite enough of Egypt, thanks."

So here they are. Silence, a chopper, and a contemplative bombshell for company. At least the handcuffs are here to hold his hand through the mess.

Carmelita takes her interrogation sheet and throws it away. He raises an eyebrow. She raises one back.

"So, Cooper," she restarts. "why don't you work for the law?"

Sly twists his lip into a smile. He can't feel it. "Too restrained," he says. "I was raised in thievery, Carmelita. And quite frankly, kleptomania runs in my family. Even if I wanted to walk the straight road for a while, I couldn't stop myself. May as well do some good with it." He leans forward, sends her an imploring look. "I just do what I do best."

"Stealing." She replies flatly.

He gives her a smile and hopes she knows it's a real one.


End file.
